STA, 2 August 2022 - On an annual level, at-home consumption of beer in Slovenia is some 26.4 litres per capita, according to the data from the Statistics Office released on Tuesday ahead of International Beer Day, a celebration for beer-lovers, brewers and pub owners.

Beer prices have gone up in 2021, by 3.2% year-on-year, as retail price for lager stood at EUR 1.83 per litre, while half a litre of ale in bars sold at EUR 2.89 on average.

In 2020, Slovenia had 68 active breweries, almost five times as many as in 2008 when there were only 15.

svetovni dan piva ANG from SURS on Vimeo.

Last year, Slovenia produced 1,260 tonnes of hops, the most important ingredient in beer brewing. Exports amounted to 2,253 tonnes, with the majority of it (56%) being shipped to Germany, while imports stood at 451 tonnes with Germany also being the biggest importer of hops to Slovenia at 64%.

The total value of beer imports last year was EUR 26.7 million, with Austria making the most profit at a 38% share. The value of exports reached EUR 55.9 million, with most beer (25%) being exported to Croatia.

Interestingly, Slovenia also has a beer-related street name, Pivovarniška Ulica (Brewers' Street), with one located in Ljubljana and the other in the spa and brewery town of Laško in the east. Both streets combined house 32 residents.

Originating from California, US, International Beer Day was founded in 2007 and is now celebrated worldwide.

STA, 3 August 2021 - Beer lovers, brewers, hop growers and pub owners will celebrate International Beer Day on Friday. Last year, there were 68 companies in Slovenia with beer production as their main activity, compared to only 12 in 2010, according to the Statistics Office. According to 2018 data, Slovenians consume 26 litres of beer at home on average per year.

Slovenia's beer exports surpassed imports last year. According to the statisticians, Slovenia exported EUR 44.7 million worth of beer, the most in 10 years, with imports standing at EUR 26.2 million.

In value terms, Slovenia's beer exports were up 19% compared to 2019, while imports were down 3%. Most of the exports went to Croatia (27%), followed by Italy (21%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (21%). Meanwhile, the most imports came from Austria (40%), Croatia (21%) and the Czech Republic (9%).

The beer trade is at its busiest in the summer months of June, July and August. In 2020, Slovenia exported 44% of its total annual beer exports during these months (with July being the peak month) and imported 33% of its total annual beer imports.

Beer prices have not changed significantly in Slovenia over the last ten years, either in restaurants or in shops. Last year, the average price of a pint of light beer in a pub was EUR 2.93. In shops, the average price of a pint of beer made in Slovenia was EUR 0.88.

Slovenia is one of the EU's largest hop producers after Germany and the Czech Republic. In 2020, Slovenia produced 2.723 tonnes of hops (up 6%), even though the growing area was 8% smaller than in 2019, as the hops were cultivated on 1,489 hectares.

As is the case with beer, Slovenia is primarily an export-oriented country, exporting most of the hops it produces. Last year, most hops were exported to Germany, accounting for 37% of the total.

STA, 4 December 2020 - Slovenia's major beverage companies are no exception when it comes to the devastating impact of the pandemic on the industry worldwide. Some companies have recorded a major drop in sales in the second Covid-19 wave, particularly due to the hospitality sector lockdown.

Retail demand has increased due to the closure of hotels, restaurants and bars, however the drinks companies do not believe that this uptick could offset or significantly mitigate the overall contraction.

Slovenian brewers, including the country's largest beer maker Pivovarna Laško Union, have been experiencing the ramifications of anti-coronavirus restrictions since beer consumption largely depends on socialising.

An estimate by the Association of Slovenian Brewers shows that some 38,000 jobs are at risk due to the closure of restaurants, bars, pubs and cafes.

There is a silver lining - online shopping trends, which are expected to continue to point up.

Nevertheless, the situation is expected to remain precarious in the coming months, Pivovarna Laško Union has told the STA.

The Slovenian beer sector estimates that domestic sales of individual producers may drop by at least 30%, some may even experience a 95% contraction of sales.

Mineral water producer Radenska has told the STA that hospitality sector sales had ground to a halt during the second wave.

The wine sector is seeing similar problems. The winery Vina Koper told the STA that most of its plans had to be pushed back. After stabilising operations between May and September, it faces a challenging period, a season deemed vital for the sector.

The winery Klet Brda used to generate almost half of its income via exports, but this advantage turned to dust under current circumstances.

The company remains an optimist given foreign distributors' forecasts and first positive signals from the US market.

STA, 10 August 2020 - Pivovarna Laško Union, Slovenia's largest brewery, last year generated EUR 156.5 million in net sales revenue, up 2.2% year-on-year, on the back of higher sales in the domestic market. Net profit was meanwhile up by 20% to EUR 24.4 million, shows the annual report published on Monday.

The share of net sales revenue generated in foreign markets in total net sales revenue was 26%, while compared to 2018, the volume sales of beer in the Slovenian market were up by half a percent.

Pivovarna Laško Union's sales in foreign markets last year were up by 4.8% year-on-year, with the growth attributed to higher sales to companies in the Heineken Group, which has been the owner of the Slovenian brewery since 2016.

Director general Zooullis Mina says in the report that the coronavirus epidemic has significantly impacted the company's operations.

The closure of bars, restaurants, hotels and other establishments was followed by an almost 100% drop in sales in the hotel, restaurant and catering industries.

On the other hand, the company, which at the end of 2019 employed 585 workers, recorded no significant drop in sales to shops.

STA, 9 April 2020 - In the new reality of closed borders Slovenia like most others countries is struggling to secure what are often foreign seasonal workers in agriculture. The hop trellis construction is currently the most pressing issue and it looks like it will be resolved with two large organised transfers of Romanian workers.

According to the head of the Association of Slovenian Hop Growers Janez Oset, five buses carrying 193 Romanian workers will be brought in presumably on Saturday.

Oset, who told the STA in March that the growers needed between 800 and 1,000 seasonal workers in the spring but that only 250 of what are usually Romanian workers had arrived by then, explained the association had managed to secure a permit for the transport of the workers across Hungary.

He said face masks had been provided for all of them, while the workers also need to have special Romanian agro health insurance for a 45-day period so eventual treatment costs are covered. All will moreover need to provide a certificate they are not SARS-CoV-2 carriers.

In line with instructions from the Health Ministry, compulsory 14-day quarantine for those entering the country also applies for seasonal workers, but Oset said this was not feasible given the work needed to proceed immediately.

He is instead in favour of a quarantine regime that would involve accommodation organised by the hop growers, who would need to take the workers' temperature on a daily basis and isolate any symptomatic individuals.

"It is high time the workers from Romania, who have been working at hop farms in Slovenia for years, came and help," Oset said, arguing any additional delays would lead to the harvest being lost.

Oset, who expects another group from Romanian workers in about 10 days, said he had written to Prime Minister Janez Janša and Agriculture Minister Aleksandra Pivec about the situation. He noted Germany had flown in 80,000 workers from Romania to assist its hop growers.

The Agriculture Ministry has meanwhile said that it has become actively involved in addressing worker shortages in the sector. The ministry said it established communication with student job services and the Employment Service.

The ministry is also coordinating with other government departments so as to enable other people to help out in agriculture if they wish to do so, with the ministry counting on pensioners, those temporarily laid-off and students.

STA, 31 July 2019 - Slovenian beer exports grew by almost 20% in 2018 year-on-year, while hop exports increased by 17%, showed the Statistics Office data released on Wednesday, ahead of International Beer Day, which is observed on the first Friday in August.

The country's beer exports exceeded imports last year - exports topped EUR 34 million, while imports reached EUR 28.5 million.

Slovenia exported most of its beer to Croatia (30%), Italy (21%) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (19%), while most of Slovenian beer imports, which decreased slightly last year (by 3%), came from Austria (40%), Croatia (19%) and the Czech Republic (10%).

The number of Slovenian beer makers is on the rise - there were 61 registered in Slovenia last year, which is quite an increase compared to 2010 when there were only 13 of them.

Beer lovers paid some 2.8 euro on average for half a litre of pale ale in pubs or some 90 cents in stores in 2018.

Slovenian hop growers produced more than 3,000 tonnes of hop, which is a record amount since 1998 and a 43% increase on 2017.

Slovenia ranks third in hop production among EU countries, following Germany and the Czech Republic. The country's hop exports outweighed imports by far, amounting to EUR 26 million. On the other hand, hop imports totalled EUR 2.1 million.

Almost half of Slovenian exported hop went to Germany last year, with China (16%) and the UK (10%) being target markets as well.

STA, 21 July 2019 - Six years after it was launched as one of the first craft breweries in Slovenia, Pivovarna Pelicon has grown into a fully-fledged company with six employees that is looking to crack the million euro revenue mark.

Posting net sales of EUR 584,000 for 2018, up over a quarter on the year before, the company expects annual revenue to rise by about 30% to roughly EUR 900,000 this year, co-founder Anita Lozar told the STA. Virtually the entire profit is reinvested.

The company sells its range of craft beers in Slovenia and Italy. This summer it has decided to enter the Croatian and Danish markets.

Starting off with a single product, a pale ale, Pelicon currently offers nine types of beer and has the capacity to produce up to 250,000 litres of the hoppy beverage a year. It has also branched out from beer to produce a craft gin and a "hoppy tonic" with real quinine.

"Over these six years we've grown, seen where our shortcomings are and slowly started to tackle them. We've slowly improved our product portfolio and started bottling beer. We currently sell half the beer bottled and half on tap in pubs, which we had not been doing before," Lozar said,

About a year ago the brewery also started to work with retailers. According to Lozar, this means having to increase output, which again required production adjustments. "But these are sweet problems," she said.

STA, 9 July 2019 - Pivovarna Laško Union, a Slovenian brewery owned by the Dutch company Heineken, ended 2018 with a net profit of EUR 20.3 million, up roughly a third form 2017, on net sales revenues of EUR 153.1 million, a rise of 6.5%.

Net sales revenues rose mostly on account of heftier sales in foreign markets, which accounted for 26% of all sales revenue, up 4 percentage points, the Ljubljana-based company said in Tuesday's press release.

Its operating profit (EBIT) rose by 29% to EUR 27.6 million, whereas normalised EBIT - the operating profit adjusted to remove one-off events - reached EUR 28.6 million.

Director general Zooullis Mina, who has been at the helm of the Slovenian brewer since the spring 2018, labelled the last business year successful.

He noted that 45 investments had been made in the brewery's two production facilities - Pivovarna Union and Pivovarna Laško - and in the logistics segment.

Sustainable development being an integral part of the group's business strategy, Pivovarna Laško Union used 5% less drinking water and 10% less energy to produce a litre of beer in 2018 compared to 2016. What is more, Laško uses only Slovenian-grown hops.

At the end of 2018, Pivovarna Laško Union had a workforce of 596, roughly on a par with 2017.

The group was established in 2016 with the merger of Pivovarna Laško and Pivovarna Union after the two were acquired by Heineken a year earlier.

I’m a big fan of the Slovenian craft beer scene, especially now it’s moved on from hoppy IPAs to explore a fuller range of what’s possible. My personal favourites are sours – the perennial “next big thing” – and Bevog’s work in this area in particular, but I’m willing to give anything a try in the name of research.

However, with well over 100 brewers in the country a little guidance might be needed, and one rather surprising place to find it is Rampant Lion Reviews. Surprising because it’s a YouTube channel run by a Scottish guy in Skåne, Sweden, with a focus on beer, whisky and saké, and 1,640 videos posted as of typing, seemingly a new one every day. 

Related: All out posts on craft beer are here

Among these are currently 21 reviews of Slovenian beers, from the standard Laško to more indie producers like Pelicon, Lobik, Reservoir Dogs, and Tektonik, as seen in the following playlist. Skål, slàinte and na zdravje!

Curious about how Pelicon's The Third Pill got it's name?

STA, 17 January 2019 - Slovenia will promote its growing brewery industry at the International Green Week (IGW) in Berlin, one of the biggest agricultural and food exhibitions in the world. Kicking off on Thursday, the 84th IGW will feature more than 1,700 exhibitors and will be accompanied by an agriculture ministerial attended by Slovenia's Aleksandra Pivec.

Aleksandra Pivec. Wikimedia: STA, CC-by-4.0

Slovenia's stall will feature micro breweries Vizir, Tektonik, Hopsbrew, Adam Ravbar, Maister, Ressel, Green Gold, Reservoir Gogs, Barut Brewing, Frizi Beer, Castra and Človeška Ribica, as well as the country's biggest brewery, the Heineken-owned Pivovarna Laško Union.

The stall will also feature hop-growing companies and associations from Slovenia, as well as three start-up companies: plant pot maker Urban Planty, aromatic salt maker Barba Sol and chili pepper grower Gorki Chili.

Photo: JL Flanner

Read our story on Gorki Chili here

Pivec will attend the opening on Thursday and will stay in Berlin until Sunday. On Friday, she will hold bilateral meetings, among others with Jose Graziano da Silva, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

On Saturday, she will attend the agriculture ministerial hosted by German Food and Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner. The high-level meeting will focus on digitalisation in agriculture. The ministerial will also discuss young farmers, small farms and family farms, which are priorities of the FAO.

Pivec will wrap up her trip by meeting Slovenians living in Berlin on Sunday.

Watch three men try too many Slovenian craft beers here